Unfortunately, the term "rho" has two different
meanings in the field of statistics. Because this situation can lead to
confusion, perhaps it would be helpful if I (1) clarified what these two
meanings are and (2) indicated which of the two rhos you're more likely
to come across as you read or hear summaries of research investigations.

If a researcher computes Spearman's rank-order correlation,
he/she may refer to this procedure, or the correlation coefficient that's
computed, as "Spearman's rho." Some researchers drop Spearman's
name and refer to this correlational procedure (or it's resulting coefficient)
as "rho." A few refer to Spearman's rho via the Greek letter
r. When used in this way, rho belongs under the umbrella of descriptive
statistics.

If a researcher takes his/her data and computes Pearson's
product-moment correlation, he/she will likely refer to the resulting
correlation coefficient as the "product-moment correlation,"
"Pearson's r," or simply "r."

If the researcher who computes Pearson's r is interested
only in describing the relationship between scores on
the two variables of interest, then r would fall under the umbrella of
desriptive statistics, just like the rho I talked about two paragraphs
ago.

However, many researchers compute r on data that have
come from a sample, and their intent is to make a correlational inference
from the sample to the appropriate population. In other words, in this
kind of situation, r is being used for the purpose of making an educated
guess as to the value of the product-moment correlation in the population.
Using more formal, statistical language, the computed r is the "statistic"
while the unknown value of the product-moment correlation in the population
is the "parameter."

Normally, lower-case Greek letters are used to represent
population parameters. The letter mu, m, stands for the population mean,
while the letter sigma, s, stands for the population standard deviation.
The letter that represents the population product-moment correlation is
r. This letter, of course, is rho.

Thus, the word "rho," when you see or hear
it in a research summary, might be referring to Spearman's rank-order
correlation or it might be referring to the parameter value of Pearson
product-moment correlation. Usually, the written or spoken use of the
word "rho" carries the first of these two meanings. That's because
most researchers don't very often think about or refer to the population
parameters toward which their inferential procedures are directed. Sadly,
they get so caught up with their sample data that they fail to discuss
population parameters. For this reason, any use of the term "rho"
is probably descriptive in nature, and that means the referent is Spearman's
rank-order correlation rather than the parameter value of Pearson's correlation.

I hope this clarification helps you avoid some potential
confusion when you next come across the term "rho."